Public Debt in China and Russia

The following graphs are from a cool new interactive posted by the Economist. The interactive gives multiple ways of examining public debt, country by country. The first map, below, shows total 2009 public debt per capita:

This one shows the yearly rate of change from 2008 to 2009:

There are several interesting subplots here, but my main comment is about China and Russia. Each has very low public debt per capita (certainly unsurprising for China, given its population), but each was also among the countries with the most rapid increases in public debt over the past year. Just eyeballing the chart, the only other country I see with comparably low per capita debt, and comparably high debt growth rates, is Chile.

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the author | mckinsey consultant based in london | former speechwriter for queen rania of jordan | former economics writer at council on foreign relations | winner of 2009 emmy award | see full profile at LeeHudsonTeslik.com